1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a joint connector and a method of manufacturing metal fittings for connection with the joint connector.
2. Description of the Related Art
A connector assembly is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (kokai) No. 8-64314. In this publication, as shown in FIG. 1, a connector element is provided by firstly stacking two lead frames 2, 3 each having a plurality of contacts 1 on each other, welding the lead frames 2, 3 together, subsequently fixing them with an insulating housing block 4, and finally eliminating all of band-shaped carriers of the lead frames 2, 3. Next, as shown in FIG. 2, the contacts 1 of the completing connector element are inserted into contact-accommodating spaces formed in another insulating housing block 5.
In the above-mentioned conventional connector assembly, however, it has been necessary to prepare the insulating housing blocks 4 of various kinds corresponding to the number of layers defined in the insulating housing block 5 because the blocks 4, 5 are different from each other in structure, thereby causing the number of components to be increased. Therefore, the production/management of the components and the assembling work become troublesome to make it difficult to reduce the manufacturing cost.
Further, since the contacts 1 of each connector element are to be bent after the lead frames 2, 3 have been stacked on each other, there is a problem that the welding part may be subjected to stress.
Additionally, in the conventional connector assembly, it has been impossible to perform the connection between the connector elements in the vertical direction, thereby requiring connection wires.